First measurement of energy released from a virus during infection

For the first time, scientists have directly measured the energy associated with the expulsion of viral DNA, a pivotal discovery toward fully understanding the physical mechanisms that control viral infection and designing drugs to interfere with the process.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Helmets reduce the risk of head injuries among skiers and snowboarders by 35 percent

Helmets reduce the risk of head injury among skiers and snowboarders by 35 percent with no evidence of an increased risk of neck injury, a new study finds.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Scientists discover new treatment for chronic pain condition

Scientists have discovered that treating the immune system of patients with complex regional pain syndrome leads to a significant reduction in pain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Brain dopamine receptor density correlates with social status

People have typically viewed the benefits that accrue with social status primarily from the perspective of external rewards. A new study suggests that there are internal rewards as well. Researchers found that increased social status and increased social support correlated with the density of dopamine D2/D3 receptors in the striatum, a region of the brain that plays a central role in reward and motivation, where dopamine plays a critical role in both of these behavioral processes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

How well do scientists understand how changes in Earth's orbit affect long-term natural climate trends?

The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth's orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by new research findings.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Cholesterol's link to heart disease gets clearer and more complicated

By considering molecular-level events on a broader scale, researchers now have a clearer, if more complicated, picture of how one class of immune cells goes wrong when loaded with cholesterol. The findings show that, when it comes to the development of atherosclerosis and heart disease, it's not about any one bad actor -- it's about a network gone awry.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

New research on Type 2 diabetes could benefit young adults with condition

Researchers have demonstrated new mechanisms in muscle cells that may explain severe insulin resistance and a reduced response to aerobic exercise in young obese patients with type 2 diabetes. These findings may contribute to the development of more specific treatments for young people with type 2 diabetes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Melt from Alaskan glaciers largely overestimated in previous studies, glaciologists show

Glaciologists have shown that previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. Recent data from the SPOT 5 and ASTER satellites have enabled researchers to extensively map mass loss in these glaciers, which contributed 0.12 mm/year to sea-level rise between 1962 and 2006, rather than 0.17 mm/year as previously estimated.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

NASA, GM take giant leap in robotic technology

Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM are working together to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Link between birth defect gastroschisis and the agricultural chemical atrazine found

New findings demonstrate a link between the birth defect gastroschisis and the agricultural chemical atrazine. Gastroschisis is a type of inherited congenital abdominal wall defect in which the intestines, and sometimes other organs, develop outside the fetal abdomen through an opening in the abdominal wall. The incidence of gastroschisis is on the rise, increasing two to four times in the last 30 years.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Clouds force shuttle delay, next try maybe Monday (AP)

AP - Clouds prevented space shuttle Endeavour from blasting off Sunday on the last planned nighttime shuttle launch, delaying its trip with a final few building blocks for the International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:16 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The historic storm that slammed the Mid-Atlantic the past couple of days was expected to continue moving away from the coast on Sunday, allowing residents to dig out from several feet of new snow.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 3:07 am

US shuttle Endeavour launch delayed (AFP)

AFP - The launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour was delayed by 24 hours early Sunday due to bad weather over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:57 am

Cloud forces shuttle launch delay

Low cloud at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida prevents the shuttle Endeavour from launching on a final night flight to the ISS.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:57 am

Space Shuttle Launch Delayed by Thick Clouds (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Thick clouds thwarted the attempted predawn launch of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour on Sunday, forcing the orbiter's six-astronaut crew to wait at least one more day before rocketing into orbit.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:46 am

Space shuttle launch delayed at least a day

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA postponed the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour on Sunday because of cloudy skies over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:45 am

Mid-Atlantic plows, digs out of epic blizzard (AP)

AP - The whiteout at the White House. Snowmageddon. Snowpocalypse.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:44 am

Toyota to announce action soon for Prius hybrids (AP)

AP - Toyota said Sunday that it will soon announce a plan for dealing with braking problems in its Prius hybrid amid reports that the world's largest automaker plans to issue a recall for the latest model of the vehicle in Japan.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 2:16 am

Toyota to announce Prius recall this week: report (AFP)

AFP - Toyota, reeling from car safety woes that have sullied its global reputation, will this week announce the recall of 300,000 of its flagship Prius hybrid because of brake flaws, newspapers reported Sunday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 1:45 am

India successfully tests nuclear-capable missile (AP)

AP - India again successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable missile Sunday that can hit targets across much of Asia and the Middle East, an official said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 1:25 am

Activists, Japanese whalers clash in Antarctic waters (AFP)

AFP - Anti-whaling activists and Japanese harpoonists have blamed each other for a collision between their ships in Antarctic waters, as the environmentalists warned Sunday of more clashes to come.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Feb 2010 | 12:42 am

Thousands of dinosaur footprints uncovered in China (AFP)

AFP - Archaeologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, state media reported, in an area said to be the world's largest grouping of fossilised bones belonging to the ancient animals.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Feb 2010 | 10:55 pm

Will we ever hear from aliens?

It will soon be half a century since the American astronomer Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at the star Tau Ceti in the hope of picking up an extraterrestrial broadcast, and we still haven't heard anything. So is there anyone out there?

Fifty years ago Frank Drake – then a young astronomer from Cornell University – began an experiment that would have profound implications for humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos. He turned the newly constructed Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia towards Tau Ceti, a nearby star that is similar to our own Sun.

His purpose was simple: he wanted to pick up transmissions from any alien civilisations that might be flourishing on planets in orbit round Tau Ceti.

Drake and other scientists had realised that for the previous 40 years our own increasingly powerful radar, radio and TV transmissions – of news programmes and I Love Lucy shows – had formed an expanding shell of electromagnetic radiation that was spreading across space. Picked up by alert aliens, these signals would tell them that Homo sapiens had arrived in their full intellectual and cultural glory.

And, of course, what was true for earthling transmissions would also be true for broadcasts made by aliens. We should be able to hear theirs just as they could listen to ours.

So Drake set up Project Ozma – named after the Land of Oz, a place where exotic beings lived – and in early April 1960 turned the Green Bank telescope towards Tau Ceti. It would be humanity's first attempt to pick up radio signals from intelligent beings beyond our solar system.

Green Bank was a state-of-the-art observatory, we should note, though it was relatively crudely equipped by today's standards. "The radio receiver used vacuum tubes, there was no computer and we only had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to record any alien voices we might pick up," Drake recalls.

For half an hour the team listened to the noise of Tau Ceti – a persistent, meaningless hiss – before they switched stars, to Epsilon Eridani, another Sun-like neighbour that they had already selected to be their second target. This time they got a very different response: a series of regular, clearly artificial pulses boomed from the receiver's loudspeakers. The team had struck extraterrestrial gold almost at the first attempt, it seemed. "Could it be this easy?" Drake wondered.

Then a few control adjustments revealed the truth. The "transmissions" from Epsilon Eridani were in fact coming from a nearby military base. Despite continued efforts over the next two months to detect intelligent signals from the two stars, in various different wavelengths, Drake's team of young astronomers drew a complete blank.

Thus human beings' first search for intelligent aliens ended without finding a hint that there was anyone "out there". Scientists heard nothing then and, more to the point, we have heard nothing since then. Despite half a century of trying to eavesdrop on ET, by pointing telescopes of increasing power at thousands of stars, and by searching across millions of different radio frequencies, not a single signal has ever been picked up to suggest that somewhere in our galaxy there is a life form, other than ourselves, that possesses an IQ that ever rises above room temperature: not a snatch of an episode of the Archers of Arcturus, or even a snippet of news about climate change rows on Betelgeuse. All we have picked up is static. The rest is silence.

But why have we not heard from ET after half a century of searching? There are a lot of stars – and, by inference, lots of planets – out there, after all, and plenty of potential homes on which aliens could evolve. So why hasn't one had the courtesy to make itself known to us?

It is a good question, one that was originally posed by the Italian physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, one of the founders of quantum physics. If intelligent life is common in the universe, we would have been contacted long ago, he argued. After all, Earth is relatively young in astronomical terms while alien civilisations elsewhere in the universe have had billions of years to rise, establish themselves and make themselves known to humanity. "So where are they?" asked Fermi.

This is Fermi's paradox and scientists – despite all their efforts – still struggle to resolve it. Much of their problem lies with the basic make-up of our galaxy, they complain. The Milky Way is an unremarkable group of stars, in a not very special part of the cosmos that contains 100bn stars, a promising enough number if seeking the odd intelligent alien, you might have thought. However, most of these stars are going to be too big, too short-lived, too hot or too cold to support planets that might sustain intelligent life, say astronomers.

Thus the hunt to find the homes of clever ETs becomes less of a steady systematic search and more of a hunt for a planetary needle in a galactic haystack. In fact, it is becoming clear that astronomers may have to search through the radio spectrums of millions of stars before we stumble on an artificial signal from an alien.

And there are other reasons why our galaxy is not alive with the sound of extraterrestrial twitter (see box on the Drake equation above). Alien life may be commonplace but rarely evolves into complex beings, for example. Planets may support life – but only the single-cell, plankton type that coat their oceans and rocks. In other words, all aliens are scum. "And let's face it, pond scum doesn't qualify as intelligent life," says Seth Shostak, chief astronomer for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti), the US group dedicated to the hunt for aliens.

Indeed, it may be that the circumstances that led to the creation of life here are so unusual as to make us, and other earthly creatures, a unique galactic experiment, an argument put forward by US astronomers Peter D Ward and Donald Brownlee in Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (Copernicus).

Earth, from their perspective, turns out to be prime galactic real estate. First, our sun is a highly stable star and is unaffected by wild fluctuations in radiation output. Such afflictions affect many other stars and would destroy evolving life forms. Similarly our solar system is situated in a safe suburban part of the galaxy, the astronomical equivalent of Cheltenham. It is therefore undisturbed by close neighbouring stars that could dislodge the swathes of comets believed to hover at the edges of most solar systems and cause them to crash into our planet. For good measure, our world is further blessed in having a relatively large moon which helped stabilise Earth's rotation, preventing wild swings in our seasons and climate.

In other words, the primitive slime that evolved on Earth four billion years ago was blessed with privileged conditions that allowed it, eventually, to evolve, about 250,000 years ago, into the only intelligent creatures known to science, ourselves. Humanity may therefore be viewed as the outcome of the biggest accumulator bet in the universe. 'Earth is a charmed place," says Brownlee. "We know of no other body that is even remotely like it."

Or it could be that extraterrestrial civilisations are 10 a penny in our galaxy but doomed from the start. Aliens may simply be like us: just smart enough to invent technology but not clever enough to control it. Thus they may be snuffing themselves out round the galaxy almost as fast as they develop technology, an argument put forward by the evolutionary expert Stephen Jay Gould. "Perhaps any society that could build a technology for such interplanetary travel must first pass through a period of potential destruction where technological capacity outstrips social or moral restraint. Perhaps, no, or very few, societies can ever emerge intact from such a crucial episode."

Such arguments get short shrift from other astronomers, however. Scientists, led by Drake, Shostak, the late Carl Sagan and others, have argued that absence of evidence is very different from evidence of alien absence. For a start, says Shostak, alien hunting has been stymied – until recently – by a lack of equipment and resources. Governments have consistently refused to fund Seti programmes and so its practitioners have had to borrow time on astronomical radio telescopes, usually for only a few days at a time. At best, they have been able to look at a few promising stars over a range of a few radio frequencies. "It's like trying to do medical research when you have to go next door to borrow a microscope for a couple of hours at most," adds Shostak.

However, Seti scientists are now building their own telescopes, a classic example being the Allen Array, funded through a $11.5m donation from Paul Allen, co-founder – with Bill Gates – of Microsoft. To date, 42 radio telescopes, each with a six-metre diameter, have been erected at a site north-east of San Francisco. When the project is complete, a total of 350 dishes will transform earthlings' hunt for aliens.

"When we do get a signal – and I am betting it will happen before 2025 – we will follow its source very carefully across the sky, as the Earth rotates," says Shostak. "Then we will ask other observatories to check it out, and if they back us we will simply announce the existence of a message from ET. There will be no message to the president and no interference from Men in Black.

"As to the nature of the alien that is sending the signal, I am pretty sure they will resemble us in one way. Computers will run devices like the Allen Array and I strongly suspect the first contact will come from one of their computers talking to one of ours."

However, the biology of aliens themselves is virtually unguessable, most astronomers agree. ET could be of almost any size or shape you could imagine, though most scientists believe he or she is likely to be a carbon-based being like ourselves, from a world, like ours, that is rich in water, the matrix of life. Indeed, there are some scientists who maintain that the similarities between us and them may turn out to be too close for comfort.

The Cambridge University palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris says the process of biological convergence – which produces similar species from organisms from very different evolutionary origins – makes it likely that aliens will be very similar to us, not just in design but in attitude and behaviour. "Extraterrestrials… won't be splodges of glue… they could be disturbingly like us, and that might not be a good thing – we don't have a great record," Conway Morris says.

And you know what he means. Humans have wiped out countless species on Earth, including the Neanderthals. Aliens could be just as bad, if not worse. So if ET does phone in, it may be best not to pick up the receiver, it is suggested.

On the other hand, the sheer scale of the universe offers us protection. Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun, is four light years away. That means that a photon from it – travelling at 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light – takes four years to reach us (a distance of around 23 million million miles). Suppose then we find intelligent life on a reasonably close star – say one that is 50 light years distant. That means conversations will proceed at a stately rate of a century an interchange. We won't learn a lot that way. On the other hand, we will have a lot of notice if our new neighbours start taking an unhealthy interest in us.

In fact, it is not what aliens will say or do that will be the really important part of their discovery, say Seti scientists. The mere fact of their existence will be the bombshell, a point stressed by Prof Paul Davies, a British cosmologist now based at Arizona State University and author of the forthcoming book on life in the universe The Eerie Silence (Allen Lane). "It would surely be the greatest discovery of all time, greater than those of Newton, Darwin or Einstein put together," he says. "The knowledge that we are not alone would affect people's psyche, and totally transform our world view. The mere fact alone would be disruptive."

For a start, the discovery that there is someone more advanced than us out there would tell us that self-destruction is not Homo sapiens's inevitable fate. And then there are the religious implications, adds Davies. "I think the discovery of a civilisation, particularly one that is found to be cooperative and non-aggressive, would have a devastating effect on earthly religions, particularly those with a Christian basis. After all, Jesus is supposed to be God's only begotten son, sent specifically to save one planet and one species."

If we find civilisations that are far more advanced technologically and ethically than us, this will pose a serious problem for Christianity, adds Davies. "By our standards, they would be saints. So why should we be saved by Christ but not them?" Hence his prediction that there will be bad days ahead for religion should we hear from ET, though we should note this thesis is disputed by theologians.

Professor Ted Peters, of the Pacific Lutheran Theology Seminary, in Berkeley, California, recently reported a survey that suggested that most religious people would have no problem accommodating their beliefs with the existence of advanced extraterrestrials. "Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence will, in fact, expand the existing Christian vision that all of creation is the gift of God," he insists.

Davies is unrepentant. "Few of those Christians who respond to these studies realise the theological minefield posed by the existence of intelligent aliens. They are just sweeping the problem under the carpet." Contact will ultimately prove corrosive and possibly fatal for most religions.

On the other hand, there are likely to be many benefits from studying Seti signals. Aliens could pass on all sorts of knowledge. "Besides learning all the physics we don't know, we might be taught the secret of immortality, or at least lessons in how to get along," says Shostak. Thus we have much more to gain than to lose from talking to aliens, he argues.

All we have to do is make contact, of course. And that remains the problem. Despite all our efforts for the past half century we have heard nothing. It is worrying to some scientists but only a minor difficulty for others, including Frank Drake. "I don't think the silence is eerie," he told a recent Royal Society meeting on the subject of Seti. "It is predictable." Dressed in neat black jacket and slacks, with carefully parted grey hair, he displayed a calm sense of certainty about our chances of finding intelligent life out there. "Fifty years ago I was naive in thinking we could find signals straight away. For all I knew there were radio broadcasts pouring from civilisations on every star. But that was really unreasonable.

"I now realise that it is going to be harder than that. There may be up to 10,000 civilisations in the galaxy but, given that the galaxy also contains 100bn stars, that means we will have to search around 10m stars before we have a realistic chance of finding one. That is certainly not going to happen in my lifetime. Nor might it happen in the next generation. But we will make contact one day. I am sure of that."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Feb 2010 | 5:07 pm

Founders of British obstetrics 'were callous murderers'

William Hunter and William Smellie commissioned a regular supply of corpses so they could study the physical effects of pregnancy, argues a respected historian

They are giants of medicine, pioneers of the care that women receive during childbirth and were the founding fathers of obstetrics. The names of William Hunter and William Smellie still inspire respect among today's doctors, more than 250 years since they made their contributions to healthcare. Such were the duo's reputations as outstanding physicians that the clienteles of their private practices included the rich and famous of mid-18th-century London.

But were they also serial killers? New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) claims that they were. A detailed historical study accuses the doctors of soliciting the killing of dozens of women, many in the latter stages of pregnancy, to dissect their corpses.

"Smellie and Hunter were responsible for a series of 18th-century 'burking' murders of pregnant women, with a death total greater than the combined murders committed by Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper," writes Don Shelton, a historian. "Burking" involved murdering people to order, usually for medical research.

According to Shelton, the two men were between them responsible for the murders of 35-40 pregnant women and their unborn children. Acting separately, and using henchmen to deliver their supply, they organised a killing spree in London between 1749 and 1755 and, after a period of inactivity enforced by mounting suspicion about the source of their corpses, resumed between 1764 and 1774. Motivated by ego, personal rivalry and a shared desire to benefit from being acclaimed as the foremost childbirth doctors of their time, Hunter and Smellie sacrificed life after life in their quests to study pregnancy's physical effects and to develop new techniques, the author says. "Although it sounds absolutely incredible, the circumstantial literary evidence suggests they were most likely competing with each other in experimenting with secret caesarean sections on unconscious, or freshly murdered, victims, with a view to extracting and reviving the babies," Shelton told the Observer.

Shelton examined the men's anatomical atlases, containing detailed images of pregnant women who had been opened up, and medical literature and the causes of death in London at the time. Glasgow's Hunterian museum and gallery is named after Scottish-born Hunter, who in 1762 became physician to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. He helped her to deliver the future king, George IV.

Smellie, a fellow Scot, is no less distinguished. From Witchcraft to Wisdom, a textbook on the history of obstetric and gynaecological medicine, hails him as "the greatest obstetrician in the history of British obstetrics". He has also been called "the father of British midwifery".

Shelton, though, regards the duo as on a par with Burke and Hare, who murdered 17 citizens of Edinburgh in 1827 and 1828, selling their remains to a local anatomist. The London of Hunter and Smellie's time was unhealthy and semi-anarchic, and early death from disease was widespread, as was grave robbing. In his JRSM paper, Shelton claims to prove that the rival doctors could not have obtained their supply of corpses by any other means than murder. It was rare for mothers-to-be to die or be murdered soon before they were due to give birth, says the historian. People from poorhouses who died were usually old, unwell or children. Thus the grave robbers of the time could not have fulfilled the obstetricians' need for such a specific type of female, concludes Shelton.

Each used an assistant to commission killers, he says, naming Dr Colin Mackenzie as Smellie's accomplice and John Hunter – William's brother, who was a ­celebrated anatomist – as his helper. Young women from the countryside were apparently favourite targets in a city where plenty of people "disappeared".

"There is great suspicion about the abundance of undelivered ninth-month corpses procured, dissected and depicted in the anatomical atlases of Smellie and Hunter," writes Shelton. "The impossibility of supply from random resurrections, taken with a careful analysis of events, and of 18th-century medical literature, shows compelling evidence for burking."

By 1755 rumours were circulating that the women in Smellie's journal had been murdered, and associates began pressing him on their origins. "As a result Smellie and Hunter both halted their research, both presumably fearing trial and execution," although Hunter – who used his links to powerful families to ensure no investigation was ever undertaken – resumed ordering murders, about once a year, in 1764, Shelton adds.

Anthony Kenny, a gynaecologist in London for 40 years until his retirement in 2007, said: "These two guys are my heroes. The idea that they could have been involved in the murder of subjects is absolutely staggering." Kenny is now the curator of the museum of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. "They were the first proper obstetricians in the country because of their pioneering work practising what was then still a new branch of medicine."

While Kenny describes Shelton's paper as "extremely impressive" in its research, he cannot believe that his heroes were guilty of such terrible crimes. The trade in corpses was very lucrative and probably attracted unsavoury, unscrupulous characters, he pointed out. "And it could be that they didn't make proper inquiries as to the origins of the bodies, and so may not have known that the women were murdered."

Ludmilla Jordanova, a professor of modern history at King's College London who specialises in the history of medicine, says Shelton's assertion that Hunter and Smellie could not have come across so many dead pregnant women from any other source as "a striking claim. Important research… is revealing the complexities of anatomical activities in 18th-century London. This is an exciting and controversial area of historical investigation, and it invites more meticulous research and judicious research."

Shelton says his research "turned out to be a bit like a thinking person's Da Vinci Code, but in this case involving facts, not fiction. Although the conclusion of burking is shocking, to quote Sherlock Holmes, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.'"

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Feb 2010 | 5:06 pm

Robin McKie v Benny Peiser

Has the science of climate change been undermined by email leaks and the IPCC's glacier error?

Dear Robin

Global warming science and climate policy face a severe and deepening crisis of credibility. The whole climate agenda is confronted by growing doubt and criticism, not least as a result of the so-called Climategate scandal, the Copenhagen fiasco and the revelations about the IPCC's alarmist claims based on unreliable sources.

This crisis is shaking the scientific and political establishments to the core. The scientific community is haemorr­haging integrity and authority at an unprecedented speed and scale. What we are witnessing is a growing backlash over the suppression of scientific data, the exaggeration of global warming impacts and the maltreatment of climate critics. While eminent scientists are suddenly calling for more openness and a dialogue with critics of the conventional view on global warming, the UK government has declared war on so-called climate sceptics who are rapidly gaining ground in the eyes of an increasingly sceptical public.

But how can anyone take the government seriously when it stubbornly fails to heed the advice by its own chief scientific adviser? Professor John Beddington has publicly rebuked scientists and politicians for exaggerating the impact of global warming and urged an honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change. In marked contrast, Ed Miliband, in an interview with your own paper last Sunday, revels in unqualified climate alarmism. He predicted that the next IPCC report, which is not scheduled to be finalised before September 2014, would show that the impact of global warming is more dramatic than the IPCC's 2007 report implied.

Mr Miliband and his senior scientists are ignoring the most important advice outlined by the government's chief scientific advisor: although the basic science of the greenhouse effect is sound (ie, more anthropogenic CO₂ means more warming) what is uncertain is the magnitude and timescale of the effect. Future warming could be pronounced, it could be moderate or it could be insignificant. Moreover, it could be eclipsed by other factors that scientists admit are not well understood. Beddington has made clear that scientists don't know for sure given the complexities of the climate system.

The problem with climate science and climate policy in the UK is that it is completely controlled by a group of individuals who are convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer-reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in order to scare the public into submission for costly policies.

Above all, the complete failure of Britain's climate policy in Copenhagen shows that conventional climate policies have no future. What is necessary now is the development of alternative approaches that are politically realistic and economically feasible. In order for a new climate realism to be successful, the government and government agencies should start to engage and involve critics of conventional climate politics. Instead of continuing to follow the futile approaches and failed policies promoted by climate alarmists, policy makers would be well advised to introduce more balanced and more transparent assessments of climate science and policy research.

Best regards, Benny

Dear Benny

Thank you for your email, which encapsulates very neatly the various exaggerations and baseless allegations that are used to support so many global warming deniers' arguments. You state that UK climate policy is controlled by a small number of scientists who regularly ignore and suppress inconvenient data and who make continued exaggerated claims about the dangers facing our planet in order to scare the public into submission for costly policies. It is a perfect conspiracy, in short.

Just why a large number of decent, hard-working, conscientious researchers – involved in meteorology, geology, glacier studies, atmospheric physics, and other climate science disciplines – should suddenly seek to conspire in this unprecedented manner is not explained. Nor do you provide evidence that they are, in fact, doing so. Like so much climate change denial, your email is strong on rhetoric but is painfully thin on science or on evidence.

You also state the climate science is suffering a severe crisis in credibility thanks to the failure of negotiators to reach a proper international deal to limit global warming at Copenhagen two months ago. I am baffled why you should think this is the case. The fact that these individuals did not understand the kind of risks facing the world, and so failed to reach a proper agreement, in no way undermines the cause of the men and women who have highlighted the dangers and outlined what will happen if we continue to pump billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The fault lies with politicians, not the science.

You also argue that the leaking of climate research emails and revelations about the IPCC's alarmist claims about glacier melting have dealt a fatal blow to the cause of climate change. But then you would say that, wouldn't you? It is the nature of the climate denial cause to blow up minimal bits of evidence to bursting point. The release of the East Anglia University emails is indeed embarrassing, but only slightly, for they contain no evidence of the suppression of significant chunks of science. And while the IPCC's failure to properly peer-review that piece of evidence is to be regretted, it was one flaw in a report running to many hundreds of pages. The basic thesis of the IPCC document still stands: our planet is in danger.

You and other climate change deniers claim that there is no connection between rising carbon levels and global warming and so spend your time nitpicking at every assumption and claim made by scientists about the climate over the next 100 years. But how comfortable are you about your own cause? If we continue on our current trajectory, which you apparently think is an acceptable one, scientists say there is strong risk temperatures will rise by 5C by 2100. If that happens, the planet will roast, deserts will spread, ice caps will melt, coastal regions will suffer devastating floods and billions will be left homeless. The world's misery will be unparalleled. You say this will not happen. But how sure are you? Can you demonstrate with the same confidence and transparency as climate scientists that we have absolutely nothing to fear? And if you say you can, point to studies that underpin your argument that everything is tickety-boo and will continue to be so for centuries. Let me be plain. I believe you and your colleagues are behaving in a hugely irresponsible manner and are putting future generations at immense risk.

Best, Robin

Dear Robin

Since you accuse me of positions that I do not hold and attack straw men which I did not set up, I shall refrain from repeating myself. Instead, I will try to set out why I believe that both climate science and climate policy are unlikely to recover any time soon from their current predicament.

When it comes to the global warming scare, the factors of shock and novelty have lost much of their potency. Climate fatigue and cynicism, if not outright scepticism, are becoming widespread among the public, editors and even a number of policy makers.

During the past 10 years, green campaigners and environmental journalists have turned climate change into a mega-scare and climate alarmism into a new "consensus". By accusing reasonable critics of apocalyptic hysteria to be "deniers", they have excluded a sizable section of the ­scientific community from voicing disquiet about the risk this strategy of fear-mongering entails. For far too long, scientific organisations and the mainstream media did not give appropriate space to authoritative critics of inflated climate alarm.

The reason for the manifest lack of balance is easy to understand: "Unless we announce disasters no one will listen," Sir John Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC and lead editor of the first three IPCC reports, stressed as early as 1994. There can be little doubt about the aptness of his recommendation: Without the prospect of near or imminent catastrophe, there would be no social movement and little political pressure for extremely costly and exceptionally risky climate policies.

The distinct lack of balance on global warming (by leading members of the scientific establishment, environmental journalists and government officials) is now causing a real backlash. In fact, the emergence of a powerful counter-culture on the blogosphere is no longer reliant on mainstream media. It is driven by new technologies and fed by independent bloggers and researchers who increasingly publish their research and investigations on interactive and autonomous media platforms.

You invoke all sorts of worst-case scenarios. You denounce scepticism and an even-handed evaluation of evidence because any balanced assessment of global warming is likely to further delay any global agreement on costly climate policies. You greatly exaggerate, without any supporting evidence, the likelihood of disaster, while you ignore the heavy cost, in human as well as economic terms, of the policies you wished to see agreed at Copenhagen and still apparently espouse.

Good science requires a sober consideration of all relevant evidence.

Instead of emphasising certainty and fervour, it readily admits knowledge gaps and uncertainty. It weighs up all data and arguments unconditionally – pro and con – and evaluates the evidence in an impartial, detached and fair-minded manner, irrespective of political considerations or implications.

In contrast, climate alarmism suffers from a manifest lack of scientific scrutiny. Instead of carefully weighing up and critically assessing the quality and reliability of the data, alarmists habitually cherry-pick data and interpretations that seem to confirm their conviction that disaster is around the corner. This manifest bias lies at the heart of the science scandals that have made front page headlines in recent weeks. Unless the scientific community can stop and reverse this dangerous development, the crisis of credibility science increasingly faces is likely to worsen.

Best regards, Benny

Dear Benny

You flagrantly misrepresent the facts when you claim that "a sizeable section of the scientific community" has been excluded from voicing its disquiet about fear-mongering and climate change. Only a handful of truly reputable scientists are sceptical about the link between global warming and our industrial activities. More to the point, that minority is given a vastly disproportionate amount of publicity. Note the same old faces – the Lawsons and Moncktons – who are trotted out to speak on ­Newsnight or Channel 4 News whenever climate change is debated.

By contrast, there is a vast regiment of scientists, including dozens of Nobel prize winners and hundreds of scientists involved in the preparing of IPCC reports, who can speak persuasively to the other side of the debate and who have made it very clear they believe there is a real danger to our planet if humanity fails to limit its output of greenhouse gases.

You accuse these scientists of cherry-picking evidence – rich coming from a member of the climate denial camp, which does little else but carefully select minute discrepancies in reports but which has shown scant ability to muster a coherent scientific argument of its own. You also describe proposed measures to limit carbon output as "exceptionally risky". In what way do they pose danger? Are you really saying that if we develop new technologies, such as wind, wave and tidal power plants, in order to wean ourselves from the use of fossil fuels, that we will directly harm ourselves? What utter nonsense. On political grounds alone, it is simple common sense to reduce our consumption of gas and oil supplies which are controlled, in many cases, by Russia, the Middle East and Venezuela.

And that, at the end of the day, is what makes your cause such a pernicious one. You are actually happy when an international meeting like the Copenhagen summit fails and consider this to be a good result for the planet. It is not. It is a dreadful setback. You also claim to see conspiracies among climate-change supporters where, palpably, there are none. At the same time, some of your sister organisations in the US have actually received funds from organisations with ties to the oil and gas industries.

Your cause is debased because it is an advocacy of inaction. Humanity is showing unusual foresight trying to deal with a problem that will only manifest its worst aspects in several decade. Yet you willfully misrepresent the scientific process which has demonstrated quite clearly the risks of continuing to do nothing to reduce the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases that we are pumping into the atmosphere and which resulted in the last decade being the warmest on record.

I therefore repeat my request, which you conspicuously ignored in your last email: can you demonstrate with the same confidence and transparency that is by employed climate scientists that the world has absolutely nothing to fear? And if you say you can, point to the studies that underpin your argument. I strongly suspect you cannot.

That is why you have already ducked the question. I look forward to your next email.

Best, Robin

Dear Robin

By now, most readers will have noticed you constantly banging on about the link between global warming and CO₂ emissions although this is not a point that I have questioned. What I am rejecting is the dogmatic certainty with which you claim that global warming will inevitably trigger global catastrophe and that anybody who dares to distrust your apocalyptic predictions is a 'denier.'

Your aggressive rhetoric and line of attack is a strategy of intimidation.

Its real target are open-minded scientists and millions of people who no longer accept the apocalyptic party line and authoritarian policy prescriptions promoted by green campaigners.

You ask whether I doubt that global warming poses a potential risk. Of course it does. So do asteroid impacts, nuclear warfare and ice ages, to name just a few. What these potential risks have in common is that they have a low probability but a high impact. Just because we cannot rule out any of these risks doesn't mean that there is a need for panic measures. In the case of global warming, I suggest that you accept the advice by Professor John Beddington, the UK's chief scientist: stop exaggerating the impact of global warming and accept the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change.

I am not advocating political inaction. Far from it. While I reject economically damaging and, for that reason, politically unattainable climate policies, I am in favour of adapting to a changing climate and making our societies more resilient, as mankind has throughout its existence. Today's and tomorrow's high technologies enable us to do that more effectively than ever before. What is more, better monitoring technologies it will provide us with more reliable data about the extent and dynamics of climate change.

In all likelihood, we will not know for the next 20 or 30 years who is right or wrong on the scale and impact of global warming. The stalemate in international climate negotiations is likely to become cemented for years to come. As long as global temperatures remain more or less stable, as long as climate policies and green taxes are a growing political liability and as long as the deadlock between the West and the rest of the world lingers, we should not expect much progress in the heated climate debates. I believe the time has come to bring back reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become irrationally alarmist and all too often depressingly intolerant.

Best regards, Benny

Dear Benny

I am sorry if I have upset your sensibilities, though I find it rich that a climate sceptic is troubled by "aggressive rhetoric". The abuse heaped by many of your supporters on those who disagree with them is a lot more offensive than I anything I have said. You should be able to swallow your own medicine by now.

In its last report, the IPCC said it now thought it very likely that, if left unabated, greenhouse gas increases could make the planet a further 3C hotter by 2100, and possibly 4.5C to 5C. If the latter scenario occurs, the consequences could be catastrophic. Ample evidence to back these precise assertions was supplied by the panel, which is noted for its conservative inclinations and which is certainly not "irrationally intolerant" as you misleadingly suggest.

I asked you, twice, to match this careful forecast and let us know, in detail, what you think is the precise risk of allowing carbon emission rises unabated. I also asked you to highlight those scientific reports on which you base your claims that the IPCC is wrong and that we have nothing to worry about from greenhouse gases.

But as I predicted, you have been unable to give such assurances, never mind provide scientific backing for dismissing the dangers posed by greenhouse gases. You have flunked this basic test and instead have attempted to fob off the public with a vague forecast that global warming catastrophe is as unlikely to occur as an asteroid striking the Earth or a nuclear war breaking out.

But which? The risks of these two events are very different indeed. The first is remote but the second is worry­ingly real - why do you think there is such concern about the nuclear plans of Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan?

You also deny that you espouse inaction. This is a disingenuous claim - to say the least. Your whole cause rests on your opposition to the introduction of any climate-calming measures because you think the dangers of pumping of billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere are still not established. Yet, when pressed, you cannot provide any support for such assertions.

Thus you ask the world to take an astonishing gamble but provide no rationale for taking it. But then your cause never was based on scientific principles. It rests, instead, on a bedrock of right-wing, libertarian politics. Sceptics instinctively dislike suggestions that we need to curb our profligate lifestyles and so seek ways to discredit those who promote such action. Thus deniers nitpick at evidence and recoil in horror when a single mistake is uncovered in a huge IPCC report - a "crime" for which panel chief Rajendra Pachauri was expected to resign.

Yet deniers' own literature is littered with grotesque exaggerations and errors. The egregious nonsense promoted by Ian Plimer in his books, in which he claims volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than humans, is an example. Then there is your foundation's website which was recently found to be displaying a version of a Met Office temperature graph that had been altered so that it obscured the fact that eight of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. I note you have not resigned.

You say that we will not know for another 20 to 30 years who is right: the scientist or the denier. By then, of course, the damage – whatever its nature – will have been done. So we have a choice. We can take the option suggested by climate science and act now. If that turns out to be wrong, we will merely have cleaned up our planet a little earlier than necessary. However, if you are wrong, then millions of people will lose their homes and possibly their lives. When you think about it, it's not a very difficult choice.

Regards, Robin

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Feb 2010 | 5:06 pm

Moonbow, Hawaii

See more of Wally Pacholka's photographs at AstroPics.com

It is an image worthy of a science fiction film: a rainbow, photographed in the middle of the night, glimmers in the foreground while behind it a brilliant star rises above the horizon. The effect is exotic and unworldly. Nevertheless, the picture is very much an earthly affair. It was taken by photographer Wally Pacholka while he was standing at the edge of Haleakala crater on the island of Maui in the Hawaii archipelago.

As Pachokla explains, that band of colours is, in reality, a moonbow. Like a rainbow, its daylight equivalent, a moonbow is produced when light is broken up into its constituent colours as it passes through water droplets. In both cases, the source of light is the same: the Sun. In the case of the rainbow, sunlight produces its effect directly. In the case of the moonbow, however, that sunlight is first reflected off the surface of the moon and then shines back down to Earth.

"A moonbow is just like a rainbow but is caused by the moon reflecting off rain mist at a certain angle," says Pacholka. "I was very fortunate to see this. But in a sense I created this fortune as I was always out there: I drove up the crater mountain that night but also about every night, even going twice the night before – early evening to shoot the evening sky then back again in early morning to shoot the morning sky."

As to that mysterious star rising above the horizon, it turns out to be the planet Mars which is currently making one of its closest approaches to Earth. The Red Planet is currently around a 100 million km distant from us and shines like a brilliant red beacon as it rises in the east on its journey across the night sky. Hence the impact of this photograph: a distinctive planetary display captured beside a rare moonbow.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm

Despite the sceptics, climate change must remain a priority | Editorial

Public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain

In trying to avert dangerous climate change, governments are aiming for something extraordinary. They want to transform the global economy because of a hypothesis for which the evidence is mostly inaccessible to the layman.

It is the biggest pre-emption in history, and it relies on collective trust in science.

That is why recent controversies around misreported evidence and exclusion of dissent at the University of East Anglia and the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change are so important.

The worst allegations relate to the suppression of information – deleting emails, ignoring inconvenient data – in order to make aspects of the case for climate change tidier.

The cover-up is the most toxic part in any scandal. The broad outline of the scientific case is unchanged, but confidence in the processes that got there is badly shaken.

This is a big problem for advocates of political action on climate change. The case has always rested on a balance of risk. Few hypotheses in a system as complex as Earth's climate can be asserted with 100% certainty. Yet if there is sufficient evidence that human emissions are having disastrous effects, it is worth acting because the risk associated with inaction is much greater.

But deniers deal not in the balance of risk but the exposure of uncertainty. Tiny doubts on the periphery of the case, they say, undermine the whole story, banishing the threat.

That isn't true, but it is bad science and bad politics to counter scepticism with righteous indignation. In the long run, public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain.

One positive outcome from this affair might be for the scientific research community to accept that it faces technological disruption just as commercial industries have done in recent years. The refusal to publish data sets, for example, smacks of analogue reaction to the demands of the digital age. In science, as in so many other fields, widespread electronic sharing is unavoidable.

Another benefit would be more rigour in the reporting of environmental issues. Florid accounts of imminent apocalypse were always counter-productive, provoking despair more than they galvanised action.

There are many excellent reasons to effect the transition to a low-carbon economy: cleaner air, economic independence from oil-exporting states, cheaper energy and, of course, combating global warming. None of these factors has changed. The case for urgent action is undiminished.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm

Bugs Migrate Like Birds

Migrating insects were thought to be at the mercy of the wind. Not always so, new research reveals.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Feb 2010 | 11:16 am

Dinosaur Colors Revealed in Full

Scientists have reconstructed the colors of the dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Feb 2010 | 11:13 am

'Snowmageddon': The Blizzard of 2010

President Obama calls the snowstorm "Snowmageddon." But is it a blizzard?
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Feb 2010 | 10:20 am

What Is a Blizzard?

A blizzard as a storm with considerable falling or blowing snow and winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for at least 3 hours.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Feb 2010 | 9:19 am

Dinosaur footprint haul in China

Scientists in China say they have discovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, all facing in the same direction.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Feb 2010 | 8:29 am

Boy Soldier, 14, UK's Youngest WWII Death

Reginald Earnshaw lied about his age to enter the British navy and then died during a German attack in 1941.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Feb 2010 | 4:31 am